Seen this around, so I'm making an actual post about it to make my thoughts clear:
There is a view about Charmcaster that defends UAF and OV not giving her a redemption and keeping her as a villain, saying "she works well as a sympathetic villain who could redeem herself but consciously chooses not to and that's the tragedy"....basically, a character akin to Demona in Gargoyles, Azula in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Chloe in Miraculous Ladybug, Claudia in The Dragon Prince, Catra in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (until she did), Jinx from Arcane (until she did), and other such tragic villainesses.
I agree that in theory, Charmcaster could absolutely work like that....and in fact, she works like that in proof too, in the 2016 Reboot! Heather!Charmcaster is a sympathetic villain who has the option to change her ways, but stubbornly refuses to out of understandable deep-seated flaws. She's never presented as irredeemable, the door is always open - but it's also not surprising that she doesn't go through it and frankly you wouldn't want her to anytime soon because if she does you lose her as Charmcaster. And yeah, bookish, glasses-wearing Heather seems like a perfectly nice girl, but I want to keep our dorky evil edge-lord around!
With UAF and OV, however, there are three problems in execution.
1.) UAF doesn't exist in a vacuum. Charmcaster was created for the Original Series, and in that series she existed as something along those lines, a young villain with a sympathetic background who could change but decided she likes being evil better, and it worked great!
The problem is she wasn't alone:
Charmcaster was very specifically meant to be Gwen's answer to Kevin 11, just as Hex was her answer to Vilgax. Kevin was also characterized as someone who had a sympathetic background who was given chances to be good, but instead chose to be evil. So for UAF to keep this going with Charmcaster, while in its first episode change Kevin's whole character, hand him an instant redemption that sticks (energy-induced madness aside)....yeah, people are gonna call foul on that. It sends the message that tragic young villains who choose not to redeem themselves can still get redeemed and rewarded if they're guys, but girls are just stuck in miserable villainy forever because they're so irrational with their female emotions.
2.) Now, UAF did try to balance the scales with this character:
Albedo was the replacement for Kevin 11 as Ben's villainous counterpart, and he was depicted much like Charmcaster: sympathetic background and desires, who had chances for redemption, but screwed them up due to his own selfishness, anger and resentment. As long as Albedo remained this way, the aforementioned sexism argument can be averted, as it shows either gender can fall victim to this sort of behavior and tragic circumstances. But...
OV ruined this by turning him into a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain. So no more balance.
3.) And then OV introduced the final straw:
If the Ben 10 sequel shows just stopped at UAF, then I could understand and respect the argument that Charmcaster should not have a redemption. OV, however, killed that argument with its sudden, off-screen redemption of Hex, which was even more nonsensical than Kevin's from the start of UAF, and also more egregious as far as Charmcaster is concerned because they aren't unrelated villains like her and Kevin were - Hex was Charmcaster's abuser. We outright see in her OS debut that he uses fear and threats of violence to make her obey him and "respect" him, which is why even though she's also a villain it made her betrayal of him a cathartic moment. Even in UAF, the story is that he was her parental guardian after she was orphaned and he chose to raise her to follow the path of villainy and gaining power at all costs. OV just pretends that never happened and says "he's a good guy now, don't ask how and why or bring up that Charmcaster got her taste for evil from him since he raised her to be a villain like him" (the only one who does is fucking Darkstar, and when you have Darkstar point out the injustice of Hex being a good guy who's trying to wash his hands of the consequences of his actions, then you've lost the plot.)
If you're considering "Prime Charmcaster" as OS, UAF and OV, and you've stopped at OV, then I'm sorry, redemption's the only sensible choice left if you want to mitigate a message that isn't only sexist, but abuse apologist as well. While obviously Hex isn't guilty to this extent, I still must point out that we have been vividly reminded lately that we live in a world where powerful men have long gotten away with the abuse they inflict on younger women, get to thrive while their victims remain without justice. We don't need to see it in our uplifting superhero media. If Hex is redeemed, then Charmcaster needs to be as well, and by all accounts that was supposed to happen on a Gwen spin-off being tossed around by CN Asia (since Gwen being the star of the show means redeeming her arch-rival just as Kevin was redeemed in a show Ben was the star of makes sense...more sense, really, since Gwen was last left off actively desiring and pushing for that redemption). If you wish for Charmcaster to remain unredeemed, then you have to either pretend OV never happened (or heck, that UAF never happened!), or just go with the Reboot, where neither her or Kevin show any interest in reforming so long as they're pursuing their grudges against Gwen and Ben respectively.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk!
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